On September 27, 2023 The CFO Survey was released. It contains a variety of statistics regarding how CFOs view business and economic conditions.
In the CFO Survey press release, I found the following to be the most notable excerpts – although I don’t necessarily agree with them:
Several economic indicators reflect a brighter outlook for 2024.
- Respondents expect employment growth to increase to nearly 4 percent in 2024, up from about 1 percent this year.
- Price and unit cost growth are both expected to temper in 2024, including the wage bill.
- Revenues are expected to rebound from an average of 3 percent growth in 2023 to more than 6 percent in 2024.
- CFOs assign a 19-percent chance of negative GDP growth over the next 12 months, down from 24 percent in last quarter’s survey.
- The CFO Optimism Index improved slightly this quarter, compared with last quarter.
As seen in the survey, growth expectations for Real GDP over the next four quarters averaged 1.3%, up from 1.0% seen in the last survey.
The CFO Survey contains an Optimism Index chart, with the blue line showing U.S. Optimism (with regard to the economy) at 56.2, as seen below:
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It should be interesting to see how well the CFOs predict business and economic conditions going forward. I discussed past various aspects of this, and the importance of these predictions, in the July 9, 2010 post titled “The Business Environment”.
(past posts on CEO and CFO surveys can be found under the “CFO and CEO Confidence” tag)
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I post various economic forecasts because I believe they should be carefully monitored. However, as those familiar with this site are aware, I do not necessarily agree with many of the consensus estimates and much of the commentary in these forecast surveys.
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The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation
SPX at 4280.84 as this post is written